Utility Week Awards winner case study: United Utilities’ ‘one curriculum’ approach

 

 

United Utilities’ (UU’s) project is designed around a “one curriculum” approach for all. The company’s workforce boasts an exemplary and admirable level of skills, knowledge and experience. Each member has been carefully recruited and brings with them a wealth of personal qualities and professional capabilities. However, over the course of the next decade, UU anticipates that almost half of its existing workforce will have either left or retired.

This creates a challenge for the company in terms of how it maintains and transfers the knowledge and skills of its current people to the next generation of UU employees.

The company’s approach to curriculum design focuses on succession planning within the organisation. Its aim is to have 50 per cent of its operational new starts to come from apprenticeship roles.

WHAT WAS THE SCALE OF THE INITIATIVE?

UU is the UK’s largest listed water company. It provides water and wastewater services to 7 million people in the North West of England. The company has 5,500 employees including 142 apprentices. Since 2013 its apprentice recruitment has grown by 77 per cent.

The company’s internal technical training team was developed in 2012 with a team of just four specialist trainers. However, since 2016, the success of the training developed and delivered internally, as well as the company’s commitment to apprentice development in line with its “one curriculum” approach, has seen demand increase dramatically.

This has resulted in the expansion of the team to 12 technical training specialists across the seven disciplines of water treatment, water network, wastewater treatment, wastewater network, electrical, mechanical and most recently ICA.

In September 2016, UU recruited its largest ever intake of apprentices across 11 disciplines to deliver effective succession planning across the region. In the UK, it is one of three utility companies to hold a direct government funding contract and the only water company listed on the “Register of Approved Training Providers”.

WHAT WAS THE TARGET GROUP?

UU’s “one curriculum” approach targets every person in any role across UU – from first-year apprentices, long-serving engineers and graduates to senior leaders. The company chose to implement this approach across its entire workforce to ensure a consistent service, promoting equality and opportunity across its diverse population. It now has comprehensive curriculums of specific knowledge and competence criteria to match the requirement of all of its roles.

The company carries out an annual “occupational capability review” to help it understand the current skill set of its existing workforce.

One area the latest review highlighted was that there is a shortfall of instrumentation, control and automation engineers for the projected future needs across its business.

Due to the specialised nature of the role and the demand for this skill set in other industries, securing this highly sought-after technical expertise can be difficult. UU’s solution to this issue is to “grow its own”. The company invested in a specialist ICA engineer from within its business, putting him through teaching and assessing qualifications in order to pass this expertise on to the next generation of instrument and ICA engineers.

A dedicated ICA training area was commissioned and constructed at our state-of-the-art educational facility in Bolton and in September 2016 UU became the first in the sector to launch the ICA Industry Standard, taking on eight apprentices to commence the New Industry standard, to be trained and assessed at the company’s new facility by its dedicated training specialist.

 

WHY THIS APPROACH?

Over the course of the next decade UU anticipates that almost half of its existing workforce will have either left or retired. This creates a challenge for the company in terms of both how it maintains and transfers the knowledge and skills of its current people to the next generation of employees.

The company’s project is designed around a “one curriculum” approach for all and focuses on succession planning within the organisation. Its aim is to have 50 per cent of our operational new starts to come from apprenticeship roles.

The need to build its own training capability was born from the desire to increase workforce skills and quality.  UU’s “one curriculum” approach ensures its entire workforce – from apprentices to engineers, graduates to senior leaders – have access to an individual learning and development plan, tailored to the requirements of their specific job role at every stage in their career.

WHAT WERE THE INITIATIVE’S KPIS?

UU says continuous improvement is a key business driver. It evaluates performance against strategic objectives to drive improvements. Its apprenticeship programmes are measured with monthly performance reports informing key stakeholders and mapping into the company scorecard. Currently UU is achieving a 92 per cent timely completion rate which it says is “significantly high” when compared to the national average rate of 58.7 per cent.

“We continuously invest in innovative development and deliver quality training relevant to our business,” says a company spokesperson. “In 2016, we introduced a dedicated instrumentation area with extra classroom space for our apprentices. Following the success of this investment, in May 2017 we officially opened phase two of our training facility including a replica water treatment works, additional electrical panels and mechanical workshops, over 30m of pressured pipework, a multi-discipline Health and Safety training area and a further interactive classroom space.”

In order to ensure competence of its electrically-skilled engineers, the company undertook an analysis of certification dates and levels. This allowed it to introduce a new approach to electrical authorisation certification by linking electrical competence within its company to the competence criteria of the water industry standard. UU’s new approach sees engineers attend an assessment of their skills in a controlled and safe environment at the company’s training centre to ensure they are working safely. This has led to a reduction in incidents and near misses on the company’s sites.

A further success factor has been seen following UU’s competent operator pilot. The company’s approach of recording digital evidence of competence has not only given it confidence in the competence of its operational staff, but this has also directly linked to a reduction of incidents on its operational sites.

During its “organisational capability review”, a succession risk for the operation management roles were identified and, in response, an “aspiring managers” programme was launched as part of the company’s “one curriculum” approach. UU currently has seven aspiring managers studying for a chartered management degree, coupled with business placements and projects. Following the success of its “one curriculum” approach, a second cohort of 11 started in September 2017 following a chartered manager degree apprenticeship standard.

In addition, an analysis of employees in UU’s key apprentice roles has found that those who were appointed into role via the apprentice route have 50 per cent less time absent from work compared to employees in the same roles who did not serve an apprenticeship. Furthermore, the comparative attrition rate is 0.68 per cent for apprentices and ex-apprentices compared with 5.18 per cent in the same roles. Based on these figures, UU predicts it will save approximately £500,000 per annum in absence and recruitment costs should it recruit apprentices into these projected vacancies. The company says it aims to further develop this model against other roles.

UU says it retains 98 per cent of its apprentice population and all move into substantive posts after their programme. Talent is spotted early, and pathways are created to allow those individuals a pipeline for future management roles.

WHAT HAS BEEN THE IMPACT ON THE COMPANY?

To date, UU has delivered over 1,000 individual training interventions as a direct output from the process knowledge review and it is seeing a notable rise in the confidence and competence of its personnel in these technical roles.

Since introducing its “one curriculum” approach, the company has taken on 115 apprentices in various roles, and has supplemented its apprentice programmes by also delivering the water industry standards to a further 40 new-to-role employees across water and wastewater network and treatment over the past two years.

UU’s “one curriculum” approach ensures that it focuses on the continual development of staff at all levels to deliver a high level of competence across the company, in order to meet its future needs.

WERE THERE ANY HURDLES ALONG THE WAY?

One of the biggest challenges UU found was that its innovative and refreshed approach to identifying training needs resulted in a further need to move quickly from idea to implementation. The “process knowledge review” was highly successful in identifying development needs across the company’s technical roles and the resultant appetite for fast implementation of training interventions was evident at all levels. The company needed to develop a wide range of training packages and expand the training delivery team, whilst managing an expansion of its technical training centre and resources within, in a relatively short space of time so it could meet the demands of its business.

WHAT WAS THE COST OF THE INITIATIVE?

The company has invested more than £2.5 million in the development of its educational facility in Bolton, which was further expanded earlier this year to allow the company to meet the continuing demand for training and assessment of its apprentices and wider workforce.

The facility boasts four interactive training rooms as well as dedicated practical training areas for all of our technical disciplines. These include a laboratory, chlorine training rig, replica water treatment works, confined space rig, live electrical panels, mechanical workshops, over 30 metres of pressured pipework and a multi-discipline Health and Safety training area.

WHAT THE JUDGES SAID

The judges said this was a wide-ranging programme that is deeply embedded in the company’s culture.

---

The Utility Week Awards are held in association with CGI and Capgemini.The 2018 Utility Week Awards have now launched.

Sponsorship opportunities are available – contact Utility Week business development manager Ben Hammond on benhammond@fav-house.com or 01342 332116 for more information.